Politics in the Scientific Classification of Human Bodies

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Politics in the Scientific Classification of
Human Bodies

• A Presentation by
• Katheryn Wright

Edited By Dr. Picart Associate Professor of
English Courtesy Associate Professor of Law
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Aims

• Understand how Foucaults notion of political
  anatomy serves as a framework for Schiebingers
  analysis
• Discuss specific ways humankind was to be divided
• Articulate the difference between
  environmentalism and biological determinism,
  making sure to understand basic assumptions about
  nature

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Aims (2)

• Realize the conflict between scientific sexism
  and scientific racism, both of which serve as
  reaction to the Revolutions claim for natural
  rights
• Articulate the difference between the doctrine
  of the great chain of being and the doctrine of
  sexual complementarity
• Understand the body politic, or how the body is
  infused with power
• Discuss how the practitioners of science affect
  sciences outcome

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Political Anatomy

• Schiebinger writes that political anatomy is
  when the body-stripped clean of history and
  culture as it was of clothes and often
  skin-became the touchstone of political rights
  and social privileges (116).
• What does this mean?

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Political Anatomy (4)

• How do naturalists strip the body of history?

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How was humankind to be divided?

• In regards to what we just reviewed about
  Foucault, why was this question about the
  division of humankind important? What is to be
  gained from classification and an emphasis on
  difference?
• Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring thought that
  skeletons should be classified according to age,
  sex, nationality (race), nourishment,
  susceptibility to illness, life-style and
  clothing (117).
• Which of these became the most popular?

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How was humankind to be divided? (3)

• How did sex influence studies on race?

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Environmentalism vs.Biological Determinism (2)

• Schiebinger claims that the debate between
  environmentalists and biological determinists
  centered around the question of womans agency
  (141). How?
• What larger debate (culminating in 1789) centered
  on human agency?

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Declaration of the Rights of Man

• Are the liberties it proclaims universal?

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Declaration of the Rights of Man (2)

• Which set of arguments (either environmentalism
  or biological determinism) can counter the appeal
  of natural rights?

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Scientific Racism and Sexism (2)

• GROUP DISCUSSION
• Bringing it briefly into a contemporary context,
  where does scientific racism and sexism still
  exist?
• Do these debates form in the realm of science or
  through politics?
• To what extent do politics influence scientific
  inquiries? Does this challenge or reinforce
  Kuhns notion of paradigm?

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The Doctrine ofSexual Complementarity

• Where were women on the chain? Akin to Africans?
  What about African women?

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Works Cited

• Foucault, Michel. Docile Bodies. In Foucault
  Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow (New York Pantheon
  Books, 1984). 179-187.
• Hooks, bell. The Oppositional Gaze Black
  Female Spectators. Feminism and Tradition in
  Aesthetics. Eds. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Carolyn
  Korsmeyer (State College, Pennsylvania Penn
  State University Press, 1995). 142-159
• Kubrick, Stanley, dir. Clockwork Orange.
  Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Adrienne Corri
  (Warner Bros., 1971).
• Picart, Caroline. The Darwinian Shift Kuhn vs.
  Laudan (Acton Massachusetts Copley, 1997).
• Schiebinger, Londa. Natures Body Gender in the
  Making of Modern Science (Boston Beacon Press,
  1993). 115-212.